Asian Entrepreneurs Vietnamese Latest To Thrive After Adjusting To New Business Climate

December 29, 1986|By Peter Adams of The Sentinel Staff

Hoa McAfee is a street-smart Vietnamese war bride who arrived in the United States in 1972. Her English is as good as her business acumen, and her business acumen is very good: She's owned and operated as many as three laundry-dry cleaners simultaneously in the Orlando area.

Huong Rothwell, who came here in 1975, makes many of the goods in her Orlando grocery by hand, has little knowledge of American business practices and needs an interpreter to help her few non-Vietnamese customers.

McAfee's laundry and Rothwell's grocery are two of the approximately 500 Asian-owned businesses in Central Florida. As Vietnamese, the two store owners are among the latest, and by far the largest, group of immigrants and refugees to make their presence felt in the region's business community.

There are now an estimated 200 Vietnamese-owned businesses in Central Florida, as well as 120 Korean-owned and 100 Indian-owned enterprises. Many are ethnic restaurants and groceries, but a growing number are in other fields, from auto-body shops to newsstands to real estate.

Earlier this year a group of them founded the Asian Chamber of Commerce to support each other's business endeavors and give what the chamber's president terms ''a distinct identity to Asian business people.''

Most of the area's Indian, Korean and Philippine businesses are well established, their owners having immigrated to the region in the early 1970s. Now it is the Vietnamese, most of whom settled in the region between 1975 and 1980, who are coming of age in Central Florida as owners and operators of small businesses.

Between 1970 and 1974, 252 Vietnamese immigrants to the United States settled in Central Florida, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, however, the number jumped: by 1980, another 1,153 Vietnamese had settled here. In Florida, only the Tampa-St. Petersburg area attracted more Vietnamese than metropolitan Orlando did during those years.

Since 1980, at least another 825 Vietnamese have arrived, according to Catholic Social Services Inc., a resettlement service in Orlando that keeps track only of refugees, not immigrants. (An immigrant is anyone who settles in a new country or region; a refugee is an immigrant who fled his country because of war or because of political or religious persecution.)

After adjusting to life in their new home, many of the area's Vietnamese are now starting their own businesses, said Lita A. Martija, a Philippine immigrant and president of the Asian chamber.

''The transition is difficult for many Asian people who have skills from their native country and want to start a business but . . . might lack capital, not speak English or not know how an American business should operate,'' said Martija, a Longwood real estate agent who has lived in the United States since 1968.

Martija said she and several others formed the Asian chamber in May to give Central Florida's Asian-operated businesses a separate voice in the business community.

For Asians such as McAfee, getting into business was made easier by an American spouse and a familiarity with American business practices.

McAfee's father, for example, had operated a laundry for servicemen near Saigon before the North Vietnamese took over in 1975. Shortly after settling in Orlando in 1978, she opened her first laundry; since then she has owned seven laundries or dry cleaners at one time or another. She has sold six of them -- all for a profit, she said.

For most refugees, however, simply finding a job is hard enough.

According to Gretchen Jones, district refugee coordinator for the state's Health and Rehabilitative Services for metropolitan Orlando and Brevard County, while some refugees have been able to start businesses after five or six years in the region, the majority remain employees of Central Florida's tourism and service industries.

''We placed 137 refugees in jobs last year, and 120 of them were as employees in the hotel industry,'' Jones said. ''Certainly the hotel and restaurant industry has made Orlando a popular destination for Vietnamese refugees.''

They're not alone. Goshu Gebremeskel, who came to Orlando three years ago from the parched land of northern Ethiopia, wants to open a restaurant.

But Gebremeskel, who works for Orange County delivering food to the needy, is far from realizing his dream.

Although Gebremeskel and his wife came from affluent families in Ethiopia, they were unable to take any money with them when they left the country. They have no credit and little of the savings they would need for a loan or down payment on a restaurant.

Gebremeskel said he once believed it would be far easier to start a business in America. But ''to make money,'' he said recently, ''you need to have someone to help you.''